


An epitaph for the undying

by withered



Series: Who's been lovin' you good? [43]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Game of Thrones reference, Implied Deathless James "Bucky" Barnes, Implied Deathless Tony Stark, M/M, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Relationship, Pre-Romance, Protective Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier looks for a handler, more winter than bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 14:50:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18919213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: The line that separates the year of birth and year of death on a tombstone is always too short, in every case but his own.





	An epitaph for the undying

 

The line that separates the year of birth and year of death on a tombstone is always too short, in every case but his own.

It’s a thought that occurs to him when he’s standing in front of his parents’ grave, in front of the Jarvis’, in front of Aunt Peggy’s. After everything that’s happened, everything he’s done – Tony can’t help but feel guilty for it. It’s an incessant sort of squirming in his chest, a lurch in his gut that doesn’t go away especially when he has to attend memorial ceremonies.

He doesn’t like them, never has. Especially after Afghanistan. After letting himself trust so naively, and contributing in making every fight – every war the world over – worse, willfully or otherwise, it isn’t a shock to feel responsible.

Tony was young then thinking it had been a necessary evil – the weapons side of Stark Industries raked in the funding necessary for the innovations deemed too frivolous and _out-there –_ in order to help the world in the way Tony had always dreamed. Besides, Obie had comforted him, Tony was keeping the troops safe; answering the call to arms his country heralded. By all accounts, Tony was a goddamn _patriot,_ and had simply been a smart enough businessman to go along with it.

_He’d helped them get to this point. He’d failed them. He’d led them there. He’d killed them. Tony shouldn’t be here._

But that doesn’t change anything.

Beside him, the Winter Soldier shifts, and Tony takes a small comfort in their shared unwillingness to be present.

The seating arrangements had been strategic, a way to forcibly show people that everything that had passed between them – the Civil War, the discovery of the murder of Tony’s parents – was water under the bridge. It’s the first time they’ve even been this close since the day in the Bunker – since the day Tony should have died and didn’t.

_Why didn’t he die? Why couldn’t he just –_

Looking up at the ladder of names along the great stone wall behind the podium, Tony knows that they won’t disappear whether Tony is here or not; that those men, women, and children don’t get their lives back; that their families don’t get _them_ back. And that everyone who died in between – as a result, as a consequence, _as collateral –_ is reduced to nothing but a line across a piece of stone.

If they’re lucky.

The line encompasses the life lived, but so too signifies a start and stop; an end to the horror, an end to the violence; the period to punctuate the tragic poem of pain and suffering their lives had become as a result of the bloodshed and greed that doomed them.

The line has an end.

If they’re lucky.

Looking back on himself – on the things he’s had to do to survive, had to lose – and the Winter Soldier, the man he’d once been _(kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, mind-controlled – the story is the same – the line doesn’t end)_ – Tony can’t help but think, _we’re not one of the lucky ones._

The ceremony is suitably somber save the photographers flitting around like flies.

When Tony’s called to the podium to say a few words, he ignores the not so subtle snort of Barton behind him.

Tony hadn’t enjoyed these kinds of things before, but now he outright hates them. With the Accords made legal tender after countless months and years of negotiation, the Rogues’ return had been met with decidedly mixed results by the public: their lack of imprisonment and punishment overall being the main point of contention. However, with the Titan’s arrival estimated in less than five years, it was an all-hands-on-deck situation, and making nice, _presenting a unified front_ and _being a team_ had been on the agenda right alongside _preparing for the end of the world._

They have five years before.

Tony catches the Witch’s smirk from the corner of his eye, and from one blink to another, Tony can almost see it. Practically apocalyptic, the world reduced to ash and cinder, the sky fever bright and red-red-red.

Despite the spike in Tony's heart rate, his speech is practiced, perfunctory, the lights of the cameras wink in blinding succession from every direction like someone’s left a spoon in the microwave and turned it on. In his ear, his girl Friday dutifully informs, “I’ve got something.” And Tony would laugh if it weren’t so cliché.

Despite efforts to the contrary, nearly everyone’s aware that there’s no love lost between he and “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”, and even with eyes all around him, Tony’s unprotected, unarmed, alone; vulnerable.

At least, that’s how he appears.

Even though he has the Bleeding Edge engraved into his DNA, like a chromosome he was missing until Doctor Helen Cho had him placed in the Cradle, and Tony’s suspicious inability to avoid death became something else entirely.

Even though he has his family, and the New Avengers, and allies he can trust. Even though Tony has the Soldier, who’s dealt with every curious security breach that has almost compromised Tony since the day the Rogues came home.

They’re all unspoken things.

Things that Tony has been forced to take in stride and admit - whether he deserves or not isn’t the point – there are people that need him, there are people that love him, and people still to fight for.

After the photo-op, with the majority of the Rogues scattered among the crowd, Tony abandons his post with the “core” of the Avengers – Rogers, and Romanova – and goes to stand at the foot of the monument – erected in honor of the lives lost in the Battle of New York, refurbished to include those that were lost in the Fall of Slovenia.

 _Fitting_ , Tony thinks, when the Winter Soldier appears, slinking from the shadows.

“I’d ask where you’ve been, but I probably don’t want to know,” Tony greets him with, their first real words exchanged since – ever. Is it odd that they haven't spoken until now?

“You don’t want to know,” is the Soldier's reply, his words harsher with a Russian slant, the implication clear with the added movement of his hands to hide the gleam of his knife as he sheathes it.

To Tony’s surprise, the Soldier doesn’t disappear immediately after like Tony’s acknowledgment had been all the Winter Soldier needed to linger. They stand side-by-side in silence, observing the way the setting sun drenches the memorial in shadows.

The Soldier shifts once on his feet, almost nervous. “You’re not going to ask?”

“I’d rather tell you that I can take care of myself; that I can’t even die.”

The Soldier pauses then, considering, until, “There’s a lot of these,” he mumbles instead with what would be a baffled tone if he hadn’t sounded so deadpan, if his cheeks hadn't reddened in embarrassment for his own lack of social graces.

Tony chuckles, more at the Soldier's reaction than his own answer, “There’s been a lot of wars.”

“This one isn’t though,” the Soldier says, and catches Tony’s eye to verify, “For a war.”

“No, no it’s not. But they should be remembered anyway.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but it comes anyway, “The first time I took up the family business after Howard, the first time the US military used my tech and people died, I looked up everyone that I failed, and I remembered every name.”

Almost as a consolation, the Soldier murmurs, after a time, “All men must die.”

Tony’s slight upturn of lip is reluctant, unwilling. He’d gone to a memorial almost a year after his first year as SI's new CEO and craned his neck as far as it could go to read every name engraved into the stone; give each the attention it deserves so he could recall it in the night when he’s eyeballs deep in a piece of tech that won’t co-operate, to say each name like a prayer – like a reminder.

“That’s why I’m doing this," the Soldier says, like he knows how Tony's taken to saying those names like a mantra in his panic attacks, how it fills his brain and overlays every formula and bit of code his mind conjures.

“Because men die?”

“Because they can, and we can’t." With their gazes locked – so there would be no misunderstanding, the Soldier admits, “I don’t know what to be in the new world. I’ve been ripped apart and put back together, and I don’t know who I am, and I can’t trust Steve, or SHIELD to tell me, to give me orders, to give me someone to follow.”

“But why me? Why do this at all?” _You could run,_ Tony wants to tell him, _you don’t have an obligation to do this, to keep fighting – to watch everyone around you die._ Except, from the look on the Soldier’s face, it’s like he knows this already, has already been offered the chance to leave this all behind, make it someone else’s mess to clean up - make it someone else's problem – _I can’t trust Steve_ – And it hadn't sat well with him. Hadn't been  _right_.

 “All men must serve,” the Soldier says, “and I want to serve you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still in my feelings about how Game of Thrones ended so the "all men must die/all men must serve" is a nod to Braavos, one of the cities in the show/book series. The greeting they use is"Valar Morghulis/All men must die", "Valar Dohaeris/All men must serve".  
>  [As always](https://everything-withered.tumblr.com/)


End file.
